To everyone who joined these forums at some point, and got discouraged by the negativity and left after a while (or even got literally scared off): I'm sorry.

I wasn't good enough at encouraging people to be kinder, and removing people who refuse to be kind. Encouraging people is hard, and removing people creates conflict, and I hate conflict... so that's why I wasn't better at it.

I was a very, very sensitive teen. The atmosphere of this forum as it is now, if it had existed in 1996, would probably have upset me far more than it would have helped.

I can handle quite a lot of negativity and even abuse now, but that isn't the point. I want to help people. I want to help the people who need it the most, and I want to help people like the 1996 version of me.

I'm still figuring out the best way to do that, but as it is now, these forums are doing more harm than good, and I can't keep running them.

Thank you to the few people who have tried to understand my point of view so far. I really, really appreciate you guys. You are beautiful people.

Everyone else: If after everything I've said so far, you still don't understand my motivations, I think it's unlikely that you will. We're just too different. Maybe someday in the future it might make sense, but until then, there's no point in arguing about it. I don't have the time or the energy for arguing anymore. I will focus my time and energy on people who support me, and those who need help.

-SoulRiser

The forums are mostly read-only and are in a maintenance/testing phase, before being permanently archived. Please use this time to get the contact details of people you'd like to keep in touch with. My contact details are here.

Please do not make a mirror copy of the forums in their current state - things will still change, and some people have requested to be able to edit or delete some of their personal info.

Apparently, whenever I type anything into the first post there or try to edit it in any way, that stupid "undefined" crap shows up. The first post was supposed to be about haters, and why they hate. It included a nice disclaimer too...

Anyways: There are people who get really, really angry/mad/sad/all-kinds-of-negative-emotions at certain people or things in their life, and for whatever reason, cannot vent directly at the cause of their strife. So instead of properly venting these emotions, they suppress them and go on with their lives- anyone with a decent EQ should know why this is dangerous. The suppressed negativity goes on building up...until something gets you mad enough and you erupt. (This is really unfair to the one you're blowing up at, because it's the combined force of all your anger that's hitting your target.) The trigger can be as small as seeing a celebrity wear something you dislike or your friend/family member spilling something. Over time this becomes a habit and your target becomes your victim. You keep being a venomous asshole to this person - you may try to disguise it as a favour, or point at the victim and blame him/her for your outbursts, but the reality is that you are the one who's dependent on your victim for your next anger fix. (see http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-anger-mana...eally-use/)
Everytime this victim does anything that you don't like, you start the tirade against him/her. You have now devolved into the asshole who uses people as punching bags, the bully- or, as society refers to them now, the hater.

So..here's the disclaimer- whenever I dissect or analyze why assholes act like assholes, I'm not justifying their asshole-ness like the majority of my fellow people. (Oh, he must've been stressed from work...my ass. Nobody gets out of acting like a decent human being, not with me.) I know that a lot of people on here are experiencing depression, rage, and all kinds of negativity caused by the assholes in your life. I struggled with them too, and my slow slide into Turd's shitty loser mentality was halted by a book, some anime and a lot of awesome music. (If anybody's interested, the book is "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and the anime began with Digimon and One Piece.) I'd like to prevent as many turds as possible, and trust me you don't want to become one either. When I analyze some asshole behavoiur, I'm doing it so that I can identify the faulty patterns and avoid falling into them.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

Quote:People primarily define themselves by what they hate. Think about how little you've heard people on the Internet talk about their favorite band, versus how much you've heard them talk about their hatred of Nickelback. In high school, the jocks didn't care about being jocks as much as they cared about not being nerds. And that shit doesn't end in high school -- you may never figure out what you want to be when you grow up, but you sure as shit figure out what you don't want to be. Everyone you know -- regardless of how stupid or destructive you think their beliefs are -- is just trying to avoid taking the side of some villain they're sure exists. Here's the guy from Duck Dynasty talking about how he's a Christian purely because atheists want to rape and mutilate children.

So the reason that bitter guy on YouTube is screaming about "feminists" probably isn't because he hates Susan B. Anthony or women's suffrage. It's because he hates some very abrasive, dismissive woman who was rude to him on Tumblr. The average liberal hates Ann Coulter, not Adam Smith. You wind up on the left because you're running from a monster you saw on the right, but on the way you'll pass a panicked man fleeing in the opposite direction.

I don't mean this in relation to SSF, but it is worth keeping in mind.

Quote:Anyway, this is also why we always attribute unrelated negative features to people we disagree with. It's not enough to say that anti-feminists are wrong and misguided; we have to say they're fat, sexless neckbeards (then their response is that feminists are either angry, masculine women or weak, effeminate men). Conservatives are ignorant rednecks, liberals are out-of-touch hippies, and so on -- the key is to always keep the focus on how inhuman the other side is, so that we never have to examine our own. We'll excuse anything from within our own movement, because no matter how corrupt we are, at least we're not orcs.

Quote:If you walk in your house to find some strange dude beating on your mother, you're not going to say, "Sir, what is the nature of your dispute? Did she wrong you?" No, you're going to grab a steak knife and plunge it into that fucker's back. In that moment, loyalty to Mom trumps all. Likewise, if you talk to somebody who's been in combat and ask them how they made it through, they probably won't say it was their love of country or belief in the cause (how many foot soldiers could have even articulated the reason for the Korean War?). No, it's about looking out for the guy next to you. He's got your back; you've got his. That's how you're going to survive, and every instinct points that direction.

It's the reason we like rooting for sports teams, it's the reason teenagers form cliques, and it's the reason people join gangs. As long as what the tribe stands for isn't utterly repulsive to you, what it stands for really doesn't matter. I always like to point out our interview with an ex neo-Nazi who had actually joined the skinheads before he even knew they were skinheads. They were just dudes he hung around with and then after a couple of months it was like, "Now, you hate the Jews, right?" and he was all, "Sure." Of course, over time he learned to hate the Jews, but that came later. First and foremost, it was about standing up for his buddies. And this is the key: If somebody came along and said their ideology was ugly hate-mongering, that guy wouldn't have heard it as a criticism of his ideas. He'd have heard it as a criticism of his friends. "Hate mongers?!? I'd trust my bros with my life!"

Quote:When a new controversy comes down the pike, most people don't carefully study it to find out how to feel; they just follow their tribe. Everything about the world suddenly makes way more sense once you realize this: A good part of what keeps any movement going is just people standing up for their bros.

Also,

Quote:It's not just that we're ignorant; it's that we're ignorant about the things we insist are most important to us.

My point isn't that everybody in the world is a moron and a hypocrite. My point is that we don't have room in our brains to keep track of all this shit, and our first priority is to fit in. It's just the way we're built; it's nobody's fault. But it also means you won't change their minds just by bombarding them with information.

Quote:Question:

Do you consider yourself morally superior to the people who used to burn witches (and in fact, still do)? I would certainly hope so -- these people are kidnapping innocent men and women and executing them based on a ridiculous superstition. They represent the absolute worst of what we're talking about in this article.

But what if, in some surprising turn of events, it turned out that witches were not only real, but that everything said about them was true*? That they do in fact have dark magical powers they use to torture and murder people en masse, including spreading diseases and starvation? And that, since they're magical, the only way to stop them is to kill them? I mean, you cheered when Voldemort died, right?

This, then, is where you realize that you're not necessarily more tolerant than the witch hunters -- you just don't share their belief in witches. Your moral code may in fact be exactly the same as theirs -- you just disagree on that particular fact. And facts can be right or wrong, but they can't be moral or immoral.

Now look at pretty much every single political debate. Both liberals and conservatives agree on the moral principle that government tyranny is bad. They simply disagree on the factual issue of whether or not Obamacare is an example of government tyranny. Which means that in most cases, it's not that your side is moral and theirs is immoral, but that you are simply working from different factual conclusions. It really does ruin the whole good vs. evil narrative that gets us out of bed in the morning.

Now, in order to preserve the good vs. evil narrative, here is where we say that the other side is simply lying about what they believe. The witch hunters didn't really believe in witches; they just wanted an excuse to mutilate women. Conservatives don't really think Obamacare is tyranny; they just want an excuse to keep poor people sick. Liberals don't really think sexism and racism are rampant; they just like to throw out accusations to shut down debate.

This one is pretty true for me. What are the chances that I'll turn into a Turd now?

Quote:To understand it, try this: Ask a few people you know what one feature in a person's personality is just a deal-breaker for them -- what trait is single grossest turn-off in a potential friend or mate.

For me it's a loser mentality, lack of spine, lack of self-belief....as said somewhere on the Church of Satan's website, I tend to look towards people who have some enthusiasm for life.

Quote:What you will find is that their "worst thing a person can be" trait is almost always something they themselves don't struggle with. Go on a bodybuilding forum and listen to them talk about fat lazy "slugs" -- to them, anyone who isn't a bodybuilder must, by definition, be morally inferior. Go on a wealth management forum and listen to them talk about the poor -- clearly they're impoverished because they're so weak and immoral, and unable to control their impulses. Masculine dudebros can't stand "pussies."

In every case, they are careful to define as life's mortal sin the one they're in no danger of committing themselves. This is why racism and misogyny are so appealing -- if life's worst sin is acting like a black person or a woman, well, you're safe just by being a white male. In other words, you set your moral code so that you'll land on the right side of things with minimal effort. You can think of this as your Default Moral Setting, and it's largely determined by where you were born, how you were raised, and what group of friends you fell in with.

Quote:If you want to see it in action, imagine you and your mother/wife/girlfriend go to a foreign country. Upon entry, they demand that all of the women remove their shirts and bras so that they can be photographed, for identification purposes. You would think this was disgusting and misogynist, that they secretly just want to see some bare boobs, that they are a weird and backward culture.

And yet, when Muslim women raise this exact objection when they're required to remove their head coverings for ID photos, we say their culture is the primitive, misogynist one. See, because your arbitrary rules about how much of a woman's body should be covered in public are just logical, common sense; theirs are the result of crazy superstition. In reality, both of you are just reacting to your Default Moral Setting, as if it was an absolute truth handed down at the creation of the universe. That other people have different defaults -- and believe in them just as strongly -- is almost impossible to comprehend.

Quote:Admit it: You're secretly sure that if you'd been a white man in the Jim Crow South, you'd have been one of the non-racist ones. You'd have been one of the young Germans who didn't get sucked in by Hitler. When imagining ourselves transported to another time and place, we always assume our Default Moral Setting will somehow travel with us, because we can't conceive of a life without it. It is the one thing that makes it almost impossible for us to truly understand one another.

And when you try to get someone to actually deviate from her default, well, that's when every other item on this list assembles itself into a single Voltron to oppose you. You're asking her to A) abandon what has worked for her so far, B) let those evil bastards on the other side win, C) betray her friends, and D) embrace (what she sees as) immorality.

Many people would literally rather die.

I think I need to revise how I deal with people. Not just you guys-the ones in my life, the ones I interact with daily.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

This one's on the subtle types of manipulations I face daily.
*The "Here, I'll do it for you", and then they do it wrong, and use your 'inexperience' to justify why you shouldn't be tasked with important stuff.
And then they do it again, and again, so YOU DON"T GET ANY EXPERIENCE, AND YOU'RE LEFT WITH A FUCKTON OF BADLY-DONE FAVORS YOU NEVER WANTED THEM TO DO.

How I deal with it: Information control. Don't tell the asshole about what you need/plan to do, and this won't give them the opportunity to slide in and fuck it up.

Alternative ways of dealing with this: -Refusal, i.e Don't let the asshole do it. This can be a bit problematic, since people like this are often really pushy.
-Do it anyway. It's likely that the consequences the asshole warned you about if you didn't let them do your work for you are either non-existent or minimal.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

This thread has turned into a set of post-it like reminders to myself.

Quote:The challenge, in dealing with assholes, is that it's hard to resist the temptation to fight on their terms: when you explode in rage at an asshole, James argues, you're really demanding that he recognise your moral status. But that defines you as a supplicant, and an inferior, seeking his approval, thus reinforcing the asshole's worldview – so don't be shocked if it doesn't work. A better, albeit harder, plan is to remind yourself that you're outraged less by the asshole's actions than by his inner motivations. A nasty smell on a train – or a few minutes' longer waiting in line – is a mild irritation, against which you may be justified in taking proportionate action. But the asshole's moral attitudes, in a deep sense, are none of your business. Getting too psychologically enmeshed in them just makes you a wazzock.

Quote:The American philosopher Aaron James makes an important contribution to this discussion in his new book Assholes: A Theory. (Let's stick with his spelling: an "arsehole", I think, is slightly more of a fool, and less of a villain, than an asshole.) Assholes, as James defines the term, present a conundrum: they enrage us out of all proportion to the damage they do. The asshole shouting into his phone on the bus, eating a smelly burger on the train or giving a running commentary at the cinema hardly ruins our lives. Yet there's something about them "bad enough to drive an otherwise coolheaded person into a fit of rage". That something, James concludes, is their failure to recognise the equal moral status of others. The asshole "allows himself to enjoy special advantage… out of an entrenched sense of entitlement", immunised against complaints. Obliviousness is a crucial ingredient here. We're outraged not by the phone-shouter's noise, but his refusal to grant that our interests count.

[WARNING: ASTROLOGY-ESQUE B.S. ANALOGY FOLLOWS.]

On another note, I just realized that most of my relatives have Earth-type personalities; I stick out, being a Water-type. Earth types are fixed, traditional and slow to change; they're the types who stick with their tribe regardless of whether that tribe is right or wrong. Water types are temperamental, capricious and change constantly. We may appear calm, but it's only an illusion abut 90% of the time. Most of us are known to be really, really emotional...which is weird, b/c personally I also have a logical side and generally keep my emotions hidden. I have issues with fixed routines, which are bad for my productivity. While an Earth-type will have one or two ways to deal with any problem, a Water-type will attack the nature of the problem first, and then decide on the way ahead.

This hasn't won me any well-wishes from my relatives, I'm sure. And the Turds' negativity just keeps piling up like rocks made of shit...I could try to erode the shit, and expose the tiny, shriveled-up raisin-like nugget of goodness that surely (/sarcasm) exists in them. Or I could remember my nature, and it's ability to flow around obstacles, to find creative solutions, and annihilate those pieces of shit when I have the opportunity. This is MY river; while I an tolerating those shit-rocks sitting in the middle, there will be a time when I don't need them anymore. And then I shall sweep them away.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

Quote:One of the things that folks are most confused about when it comes to anxiety and depression is the relationship between the feelings and the root nature of the problem. Our society confuses these things and way too often labels the feelings as the problem. Consider it this way. If you break your arm and then go into the emergency room, you don’t say, “I have pain-in-my-arm disorder”. The pain is the signal that there is the problem. Or if you are outside for a long time in the cold with no jacket, upon feeling very cold, you don’t say that you have "a coldness disorder". Or if you don’t eat for a long time and you feel famished, you don’t have a "hunger disorder". Feeling pain, cold, and hungry are signals that your basic needs for bodily integrity, warmth and food were not met. The feelings are not the problem, per se.

Negative feelings like depression and anxiety function the same way. Depression and anxiety are, for the large majority of cases, emotional signals that one’s psychological health is not ideal and that one’s psychosocial/relational needs are not being met. Indeed, the first place that I look when I see depression and anxiety is the need for relational value. As deeply relational beings, humans have needs for relational value in the following areas: 1) family; 2) peers/friendships; 3) romantic partners and 4) group/occupational/social identity. There is also the relationship they have with themselves and the extent to which they feel proud and accepting of themselves (or the reverse). In other words, it is crucial that we feel known and valued by our family, our friends and our lovers and that we have a way to be known and valued in terms of how we contribute to society. And it is crucial that we respect and have compassion for ourselves.

Quote:Nationality. Race. Gender. Sexuality. Where there is ignorance of any concept of a person's identity, there is an alarming potential for hate. We often hate things that aren't human, too: The constant flow of time. The vast expanse of space. The vexing perspective of the universe. Even the finite, mortal, nearly-impotent nature of our own existence. Over the course of history, mankind's bewilderment and confusion over the things it observed became transmogrified into something monstrous; hostility and resentment so intense that it often pitted us against each other, and still does so to this day.

Some people blame religion, but religion is what gave the unknowns larger and more nuanced than ourselves names and faces - it humanized them, it gave voice to our fear of them, it provided humanity with an intuitive insight on some inexplicable aspects of reality. Not only that, but it paved the way for finding out which aspects of reality we can explain through the power of observation and experimentation; many early scientists came from religious backgrounds, after all.

Some people blame science, but humanity shed its own blood long before it became willing to delve into the empirical. It's our endeavor to see, to test, and to explain that allows us to mitigate our primal fears. Perhaps one day we'll understand enough about our world not to take it out on one another; it would seem, though, that it is a distant dream.

In the meantime, we must eliminate this dreadful cognitive bias on our own.

We have our work cut out for us. Our parents taught us not to ask questions. Our peers taught us not to make fools of ourselves. Our schools taught us to treat learning as a chore or obligation rather than a passion. And our society is teaching us that it's better to keep busy than to expand our horizons. All they're doing is reinforcing our innate loathing of the things we don't comprehend yet.

Such life experience, however, is not insurmountable, especially if we inculcate a growth mindset within ourselves. With proper diligence, we can learn how to love learning again.

On another note, I'm solving my procrastination issues using a set of questions:

"-Does doing this thing benefit me in any way?
-Are the benefits worth the effort spent in doing this thing?
-Is there any alternative action that would be more productive in this scenario?"

Most often, I use these as a means to deal with any last-minute reluctance after the main planning and thinking out of this thing is already done and over with; if I am at a stage that requires me to ask these questions, there is a good chance that I'm going to do this thing (like exercise or chores, for example). But second thoughts and last-minute questions are good things too, so questions #2 and#3 help with that.

Of course, I've yet to exercise...

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

First is this- DWYLT, aka Do What You Love Today. Reading this..pretty much jolted me back to reality- my approach to exercise was all wrong; too influenced by Turdette and her concepts and, let's face it, misconceptions about health; namely that fitness, taking care of yourself is a chore.

There are things that we don't really want to do, but we have to do, like bureaucracy and paperwork, or cleaning up; necessary evils. Taking basic care of my body should never have gone under necessary evils; nor should things I enjoy-like piano, for one; be there. Or gaining knowledge, for that matter.

Society has this attitude of "If it feels good (aka if you enjoy it), it's bad for you; if you don't enjoy it, it MUST be good for you." IMO that's BS, and I've been carrying that logical fallacy around for who knows how long..well, it's time I got rid of it.

In conjunction with above:
Yesterday, in a narrow miss with a tempo, somebody swore at me in traffic. My first reaction was to laugh.

Now, the situation itself wasn't that serious; but what makes this weird is that when the Turds hurl words that are way less harsh at me, I break down and cry. That's another fallacy in my thought process I must fix-specially since that thing is coming back here and will most likely stay here forever. Those dipshits have a way to push my buttons, so to speak, and I must get rid of it ASAP.

Doing what I love...there's reading, anime, piano, shopping-specially when done alone- chilling out in nature, listening to music, walking, just exploring in general...and all of those lose their appeal the moment the Turds get involved.

I have a feeling that doing what I love, and keeping on doing it will set me free from these dipshits and the grip they have on my psyche. Mental emancipation before physical emancipation, and all that.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

I agree with everything you said. Our society is sorta hedonistic, having this (I don't know if it's just America) belief that feeling good is the ultimate goal in life, pleasure isn't always a good thing though, an example would be the euphoric state you take from drugs; also the old phrase "too much of a good thing, is a bad thing" should be taken to account.

India is kinda suffering from a righteous, yoga-master madness kind of thing at the moment. I believe it may be a counter-culture to the instant-gratification thing, but they've taken it too far in the other direction and outright stated that self-improvement is not supposed to be enjoyable.

Quote: There are things that we don't really want to do, but we have to do, like bureaucracy and paperwork, or cleaning up; necessary evils. Taking basic care of my body should never have gone under necessary evils; nor should things I enjoy-like piano, for one; be there. Or gaining knowledge, for that matter.

People around me don't enjoy learning; they don't enjoy gaining knowledge; they don't enjoy taking walks, spending time in nature, creating things-no matter how shitty they're at creating, etc. Obviously I need to find better company, but the cincher was that I'd internalized this attitude without realising it. The trap of social media and vanity-induced highs hadn't even occurred to me when I wrote that.

And nearly everyone around me has criticized my introversion-preferring to read, listen to music, mess around on my own- which was what I was referring to. I wanted to convey the message of working with yourself instead of against yourself via hard-to-keep diets, boring work-outs, and unreliable goals. To paraphrase Rebooted Body, my goal isn't getting a perfect body anymore; it's to become healthier and happier in both mind and body, as well as sustaining whatever progress I make.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

They don’t. They’d like to be considered Sociopaths, “tough guys”, to scare away exploitative people. And it’s not that their behavior is Sociopathic, but that they have the ability to be so if they want to. A real Sociopath would want to hurt almost anyone they feel like for their own gain (while a Psychopath would hurt absolutely anyone for fun and gain); and it’s not that they would like to be seen as that, but they’d like to be seen, I believe (because I am one myself too), as people able to be Sociopathic if they want to, but don’t really want to, because they’re intellectually/spiritually mature and recognize that real Sociopathic behavior (hurt anyone for gain) is immature, uncivilized, disordered, etc. INTPs wants to believe in human goodness, but they’re also highly skeptical about it (not always/really believing it to be true that people are good).
So to get back to trying to directly answering your question: INTPs may want to show off that they have the capacity of power and evil (not by showing it in real action, but by hinting at it with body language or verbal statements or the-like), just to shun away evil in itself.
Every personality has a need to protect themselves in one way or another, and ours is to show off our contempt for most/many humans.
I guess because INTPs defense is intellectual. We defend ourselves more with words than with sticks or fists (like most other people/brutes).
And because most people don’t take our words seriously, because we’re not evil and don’t seem evil, we have to create a persona of evil or toughness (and we might develop such a side to us too, for protection) so people will leave us alone.

That question at the start was by Pandya, and the answer by Viqing. It's the comments section here.

There was a list on some INTP group about rules of interaction with INTPs. The first eleven points were from the OP, I added the corollary to 2, and the rest was suggested by myself and various others. (Also, we really aren't as bitter as this post might make us sound. Think of it as an insight into the INTP mind.) Discuss.

Rules to adhere to when with us:
1) Respect our competence. But remember, we need empathy, not worship or excessive admiration, so don't idealize us, because you have to ...

2) ... accept that no matter how smart you think you think we are, we don't have all the answers and therefore need help in things that strike as common sense to you (socializing, expressing our emotions), but don't pressure us, or worse, patronize us. Because once you become patronizing, its goodbye.

Corollary to (2): If you have a well thought-out counterargument to our thoughts, don't be afraid to present it. As mentioned, we make mistakes too, and we don't take challenges personally; it's just another part of the process in reaching The Truth.

second corollary to number (2) Do not be offended when we present a counter argument to something you've said. It's not that we think you're incompetent, it's just we want to reach The Truth.

3) Don't try to lead us or expect us to lead you. We scoff at such things. Instead we want equals.

4) When you don't know something, first research, THEN ask. Nothing annoys us more than people who are too intellectually lazy to try obtain information that is easily available.

5) Respect our personal space.

6) If you're a man, stop trying to be macho and if you're a woman, stop playing dumb. We're not impressed by such behavior. Instead think out of the box and act in ways that defy what have been taught to you as a man or a woman.

7) Be creative.

8) Be idealistic. Stop accepting the world as it is now and saying it is the truth. It isn't. Much of life is a social construction, based on systems of power that oppress one group or another. Things can always be more efficient and more just. Contribute your ideas on how to achieve this.

9) Politics and tradition? Rule that out of your dictionary.

10) Stop saying we are cold, or heartless. Its not we don't have emotions, its just that we put them aside in our quest to be impartial. And through this so-called impartiality, we INTPs - the healthy ones anyway - want to make the world into a better place. Our kindness is not rooted in sentimentality, but elaborate and carefully thought-out designs.

Corollary to (10): Don't expect appeals to our emotion to work.

Second corollary to number (10) And don't expect us to assemble a persuasive argument based on emotion.

11) Stop using excessive exclamation marks - except when REALLY necessary - and start reading. You ask how come we are so smart? We aren't smart. We're just very intellectually motivated.

13) Respect our eccentricity, as well as those of others. It's a good thing that we have our quirks, and it's most likely a point of quiet pride for a number of INTPs.

14) Be ready to think of more than just a narrow range of topics. INTP interests literally span the universe. In fact, each individual INTP's interests most likely literally span the universe. We aren't interested in just a handful of things, we want to understand the UNIVERSE.

15) Understand that our humor is a little unconventional. Some (?) of us have slightly "twisted" humor, and we love sarcasm.

corollary to number (15) And it's not that we don't love your joke it's just that we're laughing on the inside.

16) Stating the obvious is not appreciated.

17) Don't take us too personally. Chances are, even when we are being critical, we aren't actually trying to offend you so much as point out some sort of flaw in your logic or thinking patterns and giving you the opportunity to correct it. We'll only move on to treating you like an idiot when you have clearly proven that you deserve to be treated as such.

18) For the love g-d, please try to think quickly. INTPs love to make intuitive leaps - leap with us! There's nothing more fun than take a current topic and relate it to the past, postulate about its future (realistic or absurd), make joking references to it by virtue of pop culture references or random word play, linking it to personal experiences (one's own or others') and established theories, etc etc. Or make YOUR OWN theories ;p

19) A blank face doesn't imply depression. We smile when there's something to smile about, so don't lecture about how we'll live longer if we smile more.

20) Thinking with logic is always appreciated and it doesn't take much effort. If you think we are amazingly gifted for solving problems it isn't because we are unusually smart, it's only because we think.

21) We don't believe in dogmas or that "things are the way they are because that's how they are, so accept it". We don't accept things, if you want us to accept or understand something, then explain it.

22) Silence doesn't mean I'm bored, not interested or not paying attention to what you are saying. Silence means we are actually interested, in deep thought and analysing what you are saying.

23) No, we don't seek knowledge to manipulate people or rule the world; we are not megalomaniacs. We seek knowledge because we are naturally curious and want to understand everything.

24)Sometimes isolation and relaxing in silence while reading a book or just watching the nature and analise the beauty, the perfection of it all and how it works, is one of our favorite ways to have fun and it doesn't mean we are bored or that we don't like you. So don't disturb us thinking you are doing us a favor: it is actually annoying

25) We value accuracy and precision -- please, when talking to us, try to make sure whatever you are stating is factually and/or grammatically correct. We will try to correct you if whatever you are stating is not as accurate as it could be. And please understand, we are not trying to offend you or trying to be pricks -- we just want to stop people from being misconstrued. Also, punctuation is not just for English majors. Please keep that in mind.

26) As smart and as intellectualy motivated as we may be, we still make mistakes. Contrary to general opinion, being corrected while we are wrong is always appreciated, so don't be scared of pointing out our mistakes: we'll actually thank you.

27) Encourage us. We tend to hold ourselves to extremely high personal standards, whether or not we let the rest of the world in on them, and it helps to have other people recognize what we are striving for. Though, do keep in mind that if you are encouraging just for the sake of encouragement and not because we are actually succeeding, we'll recognize it and hear it as empty.

28) Don't think we're lazy and unmotivated just because your motivation speeches didn't get us moving with the rest of the crowd. INTPs choose their passions carefully, and the words of the most on-fire speaker will go under intense scrutiny before we decide whether or not to take their side. That said, should we decide to take up said cause, idea, or job, we will do so both realistically and very thoroughly.

I'm starting to wonder how much of my current personality is the actual me, and how much is a mask/armor designed to defend against all the BS around me..not that the mask will be useless-I'm still surrounded by assholes, by the way-, but identifying which is which will be better for me in the long run. After all, Me wearing the Mask is the preferred state, not the Mask wearing Me.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

As for doing what feels good, this has been my experience confronting life as a of late:

1) do what you feel like, i.e. wrong priorities (actually feel bad overall)
2) do what needs to be done and disregard the feelings, i.e. do what you feel like later
3) like doing everything, but dont always get around to what's not important

Feelings are not a proper priority, but they may indicate incorrect priorities. Employ grit and face the facts of what you need to do as a person to get where you need to go. Disregard difficulty, everybody is capable of more than they think.

Purity is to Believe only that which deserves it.Wisdom is to follow only the Opinion which makes the best use of evidence.Excellence is to be mindful of all these things in Living.Follow me on Twitter!

I'd like to just add how people take what they have for granted, like they just assume everyone else has it. "I know how to network (or something), and oh, you don't know that (re-label person in your head), well..." *insert patronizing comment, smile and walk away*

Say the wrong thing, and instantly you get expelled from people's inner-circle FOREVER!!

Purity is to Believe only that which deserves it.Wisdom is to follow only the Opinion which makes the best use of evidence.Excellence is to be mindful of all these things in Living.Follow me on Twitter!

Quote:As for doing what feels good, this has been my experience confronting life as a of late:

1) do what you feel like, i.e. wrong priorities (actually feel bad overall)
2) do what needs to be done and disregard the feelings, i.e. do what you feel like later
3) like doing everything, but dont always get around to what's not important

Feelings are not a proper priority, but they may indicate incorrect priorities. Employ grit and face the facts of what you need to do as a person to get where you need to go. Disregard difficulty, everybody is capable of more than they think.

I'm in the middle of summer vacations right now; college starts in 2 months. So I'm focused on enjoying the free time I have instead of basically moping around the house. The DWYLT approach to exercise also seems more sustainable to me, since (as I've stated before) I don't do things I don't enjoy unless there is a good reason, such as marks, money, or future usefulness. And I want to keep the "necessary evils" in my life to a minimum.

Quote:I'd like to just add how people take what they have for granted, like they just assume everyone else has it. "I know how to network (or something), and oh, you don't know that (re-label person in your head), well..." *insert patronizing comment, smile and walk away*

Say the wrong thing, and instantly you get expelled from people's inner-circle FOREVER!!

That's probably because the sheer volume of people we have to deal with daily is huge, even for an extremely extroverted person like Turdette.(She is constantly on the phone, and she's complaining that it's began to eat into her nap and sleep time..I swear, she needs to learn how to say no and turn her phone off.) And then there's me- I can live off little to no social contact for months.

Don't take it personally. Introverts, and specially those with attitudes outside the traditional often have difficulty in finding people who "get them" IRL. I've lost count of how many times I've been shuffled out of people's circles.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

(05-22-2016 02:48 AM)Rule_BreakerXVIII Wrote: And then I overcame the depression. I realized that not every person is an asshole out to hurt me; that good people exist, and I must reach out to them; basically, I learned more about the world and that empowered me to purge the unhealthy mindset of a wounded animal. Don't get me wrong; I still think I need therapy, but if someone tells me that I am imagining or inventing my childhood woes, I can smile and tell them to fuck off, no matter how many degrees or positions they have. A healthy distrust of authority is probably the best thing school and my parents instilled in me.

You overcame your personal grief? That's great, but not everyone has the foresight, knowledge and persistence to do so. No, it's not "learned helplessness," but either due to both poor brain chemicals and/or unfortunate things in life. Psychologists try to understand mental processes and behavior, that's all. If they say what you're referring to above, then that person is bunk (still not a reason to label them all like that though) and that person alone. Distrusting those that want to help you can only get you so far in life.

I disagree - we're only as helpless as we convince ourselves we are, and that can be a very hard cycle to break out of... harder still when the people who are only trying to help you are merely serving to push you back in.

Everyone experiences adversity, and no one can maintain optimal physical condition indefinitely. They're even survivable to some pretty extreme degrees just so long as they aren't followed by the loss of one's will to live.

The true power lies in the way we perceive the world. It always has. The most successful people are invariably those who know what success entails and have envisioned it properly. The most helpless people are those who have convinced themselves of their ineptitude and impotence. I've spoken before of the importance of a growth mindset; just by making the conscious effort to understand and change your cognition, you can start to develop and improve in ways you wouldn't have initially thought possible. A world of opportunity may open up for you.

It might even save your life. These things can only happen for real if you make them real, and doing that requires effort, which itself requires motivation. You've got to want it or you won't get it, and that's why it's important not to let your mindset stagnate or acquiesce to helplessness.

Not everyone has the foresight, knowledge, and persistence to overcome - not innately - but everyone can grow them. Ultimately, that's the very best thing they can do for themselves, especially when the world's begging them to stay down. The world is no authority - the only real authority consists of the masters we choose to serve, whether in the form of people, things, religious figures, or ourselves, and our progress is limited only by the cruelty of such authority. Pick wisely.

Damn...you really have a way with words.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

(05-18-2016 08:22 PM)Rule_BreakerXVIII Wrote: I think we should be asking ourselves why we make enemies exclusively out of people close to us, and keep them close even after they prove to be untrustworthy.

In my case its because I view kinship ties highly. I don't keep friends with pieces of shit, but I am related to some pretty irritating people.

Purity is to Believe only that which deserves it.Wisdom is to follow only the Opinion which makes the best use of evidence.Excellence is to be mindful of all these things in Living.Follow me on Twitter!

Second year of college starts soon; tuitions have already begun, and Turdette was kind enough to remind me before college begins that she absolutely cannot be trusted when it comes to dealing with 'education' shtuff.

FY (first year of college, that is; second year is abbreviated to SY, third to TY.) taught me, that much like school (worse, in fact; my old school might have been a prison, but at least they maintained proper classrooms, records, etc.) COLLEGE IS USELESS. So as far as understanding and studying the material goes, I'm relying on tuitions again, and luckily we found a great class this time. That leaves homework, which I actually am doing this time around; and attendance, which'll have to wait till college starts.

This probably sounds odd, but I'm really glad I failed FY. The gap allowed me to study by myself and rediscover what works for me, and what doesn't; it gave me the time to become more comfortable with myself. I needed the time off after the shitstorm that 12th and FY were. The notion of failure doesn't bother me in the slightest. I know what I'm capable of, and how much of that was, well, wasted (I really don't like using that term, but that describes it the best). And now I have the clarity I needed to distinguish between studying for myself and studying to give the Turds something to boast about.

Quote:Soredewa, ganbatte mimashou!!

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

Quote:When someone decides to avoid upsetting the assholes, they're agreeing with the assholes. They're being the assholes.

Ha! I'm pretty proud that at my job there was a chance for people to give their opinions. Everybody I spoke to after I wrote my e-mail agreed with me but only a few of them even wrote e-mails. Our union VP didn't even reply.

I wonder how much of our nations gradually plunge into an unhappy lazy stupor is because people just casually go along with non-sense for fear of the consequences of speaking out.

Purity is to Believe only that which deserves it.Wisdom is to follow only the Opinion which makes the best use of evidence.Excellence is to be mindful of all these things in Living.Follow me on Twitter!

Not just struggling with productivity-just keeping my spirits up is turning out to be a much more daunting task than I'd first imagined it would be. I have to consciously stop myself from sinking into a mindless 'meh' state. It takes energy, but after doing something I enjoy, I'm tired, but more fulfilled, somehow? It's tough to describe. And getting rid of the 'meh' helps in productivity a bit, specially if I find a way to combine tasks and enjoyment.

And, having teachers who can generate/re-ignite ones enthusiasm for their subject never hurts, either.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

Quote:I've read a lot of material on the evils of school and why it was constructed the way it was. I heard all the time how one of the main purposes of school was socialization. No - it was conformity through social proof. There are lots of brilliant people who could shake the foundations of existing power structures if they had the faith and support to do it.

When you isolate people, you clip their wings. You don't have to remove them from others to accomplish this. In fact, it's most effective if you can make them feel small, weird, and ineffectual within a large group. They conform or they're rejected. Instead of getting the chance to shape the world around them - as they would naturally do if they were allowed to flourish - and build satisfying relationships with others, they rot.

It's brilliant. Coldly brilliant.

That's why I'm glad I live in the age of the internet. People can build what they need to strengthen themselves, and find likeminded individuals across vast distances. Schools don't have a stranglehold on their student's minds anymore, and we have so many resources to deprogram ourselves.

Quote:This one's on the subtle types of manipulations I face daily.
*The "Here, I'll do it for you", and then they do it wrong, and use your 'inexperience' to justify why you shouldn't be tasked with important stuff.
And then they do it again, and again, so YOU DON"T GET ANY EXPERIENCE, AND YOU'RE LEFT WITH A FUCKTON OF BADLY-DONE FAVORS YOU NEVER WANTED THEM TO DO.

How I deal with it: Information control. Don't tell the asshole about what you need/plan to do, and this won't give them the opportunity to slide in and fuck it up.

Alternative ways of dealing with this: -Refusal, i.e Don't let the asshole do it. This can be a bit problematic, since people like this are often really pushy.

Or, one could say, downright abusive. When just the possibility or suggestion of an abusive situation sparks deep emotional distress, you know something is wrong. I know it is possible that emotional abuse can cause trauma, but I'm oddly...reluctant to admit that this could've happened to me. Evidence points the other way.

On another note...I feel somewhat sympathetic to the other side-teachers, that is- who have to stand in front of a crowd and shout themselves hoarse to unheeding ears. I have been one of these unhearing ones a lot of times; I know for a fact that what they're shouting is total BS.

It seems to me that a third-side pits these "teachers" against us in an unnecessary battle of bullshit, and whoever converts the most to their side wins an empty title..meaningless numbers..and a few claps for seconds.

There must be someone benefiting from this, or the system wouldn't sustain itself.

To most of us the teachers are our jailers; but somebody put the jail there, as well as the jailers, and that somebody is benefiting from the suffering of both the sides-let's be honest, I don't think the "teachers" actually enjoy the crap they spew in the name of teaching, and neither are the students learning anything. And whoever the benefactor of this idiotic system is, they will be obstacles if we want to make unschooling an option on any significant level.

Don't play chess with pigeons-they'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like they won anyway.
-the Internet

Quote:May the days and months of flowing bitterness be rewarded...
To forget!?

Quote:Comfort is like saying soothing words to a plant in a closet. Nurture is taking the plant out of the closet, placing it in the appropriate sunlight, feeding it, watering it, AND saying soothing words to it.